


Song II - E Lucevan Le Stelle

by Sam I Am (Sam_I_Am89)



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:56:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1857159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sam_I_Am89/pseuds/Sam%20I%20Am
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A death one-shot from the end of 'Havemercy'. Inspired as part of the Random Song fic challenge by "E Lucevan le Stelle - By the light of the Stars" from Tosca by Puccini.</p>
<p>My friend named two characters, the gods of fate chose opera and unintentional slash came out (as it so often does).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song II - E Lucevan Le Stelle

E Lucevan Le Stelle from ‘Tosca’ by Puccini – Luciano Pavarotti

A rather poetic translation of the last verse:

 

_Svani per sempre il sogno mio d'amore..                  Gone forever is my dream of love._

_L'ora e' fuggita...                                                           Time has fled, and I die in despair!_

_E muoio disperato!                                                        I die in despair,_

_E non ho amato mai tanto la vita!                               But never have I loved life so much!_

 

This was shit.

No, this was more than shit. This was painful, burning, tearing, dark and cold shit.

And the worst part was it was inescapable shit; ‘No fucking team of comrades left to get you out of this fucking mess’ shit. ‘You’re going to die in this room’ shit.

I don’t know if it was a sign of optimism or brain damage that I could still laugh at the fucking stupidest times. If you could call wheezing in amusement and then almost vomiting out your own lungs “laughter”.

My back was broken. That or I had incurable pre-pins-and-needles from the waist down. Either way, I wasn’t going to be moving any-fucking-where. So why those blue bastards needed to string me up like a broken puppet I had no idea. They’d already fucking won, hadn’t they? Maybe not the war and maybe not against me and Spiridon, but the others...

No way man or metal should’ve survived what I did.

After seeing what was left of Ace and Thoushalt and Jeannot and Al Atan, I _knew_ it was only fair that I give up fighting for every damn difficult breath, that it should’ve ended in an ironic blaze of glory, not hanging limply by my arms in one of their cells, not even given a mercy killing.

I wasn’t even sure why I was fighting, knowing everything was lost. It wasn’t as if I’d crashed and burned – (and bastion, how I’d _burned_ ; Al Atan had done her job well) – and snuffed it instantly, or at least passed out. No, I’d been aware, blisteringly aware of our girls, my friends, dropping like dead ducks from the sky.

There had been a keening scream in the thick of it, the kind that I’d once heard in the country when my father and uncle had set a trap to keep the wolves away from the flocks – and succeeded. A flicker of silver had appeared in the corner of my eye, distinct somehow from all the rest of the glinting dragons wheeling overhead, and I supposed it could’ve been any of them, but I’d known in my heart who it had been...

I shuddered and spat out the lingering blood in my mouth. My nose was smashed beyond repair and liked to remind me of it by bleeding all over the fucking place. The dark stone below me was darkening further, but so were the corners of the room, so maybe it wasn’t from blood like I imagined.

I tried to use my shoulder to lift at least part of my torso, to regain some semblance of dignity, but it was so _hard_ and my head was so heavy.

The blood on the floor glistened...

My eyes shifted sideways through long, matted strands of my dark hair, noticing for the first time one luxury I would never have dreamed to have been afforded...

A small slit-like window showed the moon fall behind a thick cloud of smoke and ash once more.

A tear ran down to the corner of my jaw, briefly flicking my ear lobe as it dribbled to the floor and if I wasn’t such a fucking pillow-biter, I’d have growled at myself and called myself one...

“Fuhchhkinga sheendeya.”

I would’ve laughed at that as well but speaking had filled my mouth with blood and saliva and the fact I was dribbling down my own chin was so humiliating I couldn’t even find how drunk I sounded amusing.

I was shivering with furious despair, wishing to some blood-lusting god that I’d killed enough of those motherfuckers to make this indignity worth my time. To make all of this necessary loss seem any less excruciating.

We’d all accepted that we might die to bring Lapis to its knees, me included; I just don’t think I’d accepted hearing that scream and seeing that flicker and knowing, _knowing,_ he was dead.

My already dead body was crucifying me as I hung there, straining against gravity to get my head to rise and fall back. It did, forehead resting limply against one stretched bicep as I looked out of the window at the small pin pricks of light, nearly choked and extinguished by the reek of the decaying city, but not quite.

The stars. The stars were beautiful.

My grandmother used to tell me tales of people made from stars, Th’Étoiles, all bright pale light trapped in limbs. People of grace and magic.

It’s amazing how much truthful shit a person can overlook in fairy stories.

He’d have to have been one. One look at his hands and a few notes from the rickety old piano and you could see it in him. Sometimes I’d watch him when no one was watching me. My heart would pound waiting for the second when my gaze lasted too long and he’d look or Rook would and the second that happened I’d always break into those fucking nervous giggles I couldn’t stop, feeling like the biggest Cindy coward to walk the planet.

I didn’t really know if the staring made me more of a Cindy or a coward.

Truth was, all the whores had tasted of cheap smokes and too much perfume clinging to their skin even before he arrived at the Airmen; afterwards there were no whores.

How could there be?

There was sharp pain down one side of my body, my lung no doubt close to collapse as my most weakened shoulder strained to pop out of place, but somehow didn’t. My eyes never left the stars and the orange tinted haze to the blackness above.

Something tickled at my memory then, something that the burning and the pain and the grief had pushed back. Adamo had set off The Alarm – not the ‘those-on-duty-get-your-arses-out-of-bed-and-burn-some-fucking-Ke-Han-towers-to-the-ground’ alarm, but The Alarm – and we all knew that that searing sound could only mean suicide. I’d slipped down into Spiridon’s spot and she still had that whoreson twitch in her left wing that nearly poked my eye out again. Men were running all about in an attempt to get our girls set and my eyes, inevitably, had drawn over to where Cassiopeia – a true match for an Étoile – appeared to be growling, although it wasn’t a sign of anticipation and rather a sign that her insides were snagging up.

His eyes had been on me already.

I’d wanted to say ‘Good Luck’ rather than some bravado –filled, histrionic ‘Goodbye’ like Raphael was self-orchestrating a few metres from me. But of course neither of us had even been much disposed to words.

He’d rolled his eyes; I’d sniggered.

And, god, I know it is not enough to weigh a life by, this half-memory that for all I know I might be imagining to remove some of the sting from this unexpected end. But I’ll be fucked if I look at it and mourn all the missed opportunities or allow myself to think that if I’d even said anything, there’d have been no silent agreement on his face.

Delirious, I was; regretful, no.

The door had opened to my cell, but I didn’t notice, transfixed by those little tiny stars, perfect even behind all the shit clogging up the air. I think I knew that even before these men entering my cell reached me, I would be gone. Each footstep seemed to slow my blood. So I just laughed in my damaged way again, all gurgling and gasping, and my suffocating lungs hated me for it, but I could not hold back the laughter then.

He’d rolled his eyes; I’d sniggered.

And, fuck me, but that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is one of five fics I wrote for a Song challenge from a friend. Five random tunes selected by the gods of fate from my music playlist; five one-shots, any fandom.
> 
> If you are curious to see what became of this, please visit my author homepage.
> 
> As always, my pet feedback monster is looking for comments for his breakfast. Any and all offerings would be much appreciated.


End file.
